RAPE, MURDER, MAYHEM
Guards at Ann Klein Forensic Center detail brutal rape, talk about escalating violence and fear >>
TRENTON >> One of the alleged participants in last week’s gang rape of a female patient at Ann Klein Forensic Center is a criminally insane man who was locked up decades ago for stabbing his parents to death, according to a security guard who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The 33-year-old man, Javier Arroyo, was also charged earlier this year with sodomizing a male patient at the 200-bed psychiatric facility in Trenton, according to court records obtained by The Trentonian.
Arroyo is one of at least four, and possibly as many as six, patients who authorities are examining as potentially involved in the gang rape, according to the security guard.
The Trentonian was provided names of the alleged participants and confirmed from internal records it obtained those individuals are all housed at Ann Klein.
So far, none of them has been charged, and authorities may have a hard time making cases against them because some were previously sent to the psychiatric facility after being found mentally incompetent to stand trial, according to court records.
Authorities refused to confirm the names of any of the alleged participants in the brutal sexual assault, citing the ongoing investigation.
The Attack
The attack happened the Friday after Thanksgiving, on a day when several security officers said they were required to conduct recreation periods despite being short-staffed because of the holiday weekend.
Despite being down a dozen or more guards, security guards told The Trentonian that upper brass instructed staff to go forward with the “rehabilitation” sessions.
During these recreational sessions, held twice a day each weekday, patients have access to a wide range of activities and educational classes, the security guards said.
The guards described the horrific attack as a “crime of opportunity” happening not long after one of the guards stationed near a restroom in the rehabilitation wing left his post to help attend to another task.
The victim was already inside the bathroom stall with another male patient engaged in a consensual sexual encounter when up to a handful of other men burst into the restroom stall and took advantage of her, the guards said.
The 25-year-old woman is seriously mentally challenged, the guards said, and was transferred last year to Ann Klein from Ancora Psychiatric Hospital.
The Trentonian is not naming her because she is a sexual assault victim.
Tim Ward, an assistant prosecutor in the MCPO special victims unit investigating the gang rape along with the state police, said the guards’ rendition recounted to The Trentonian was “consistent” with what investigators have learned so far about the crime.
The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office only agreed to confirm some details of the gang rape after The Trentonian informed the office it was publishing an in-depth account of the encounter.
Guards described the gang rape in detail on the condition of anonymity fearing they may be reprimanded or fired for speaking out about the dangerous and chaotic conditions inside the much-maligned psychiatric center.
Lending credibility to those fears is a memo sent out this week by Ann Klein chief executive officer David Kensler warning employees not to talk to the press about their hair-raising experiences.
“Staff are not to directly interact, or respond to interaction, with the media pertaining to any work related circumstances,” Kensler wrote in the Nov. 27 memo obtained by this newspaper. “If you are contacted by a member of the media, please refer such contact immediately to the Office of the Chief Executive Officers.”
One longtime guard called Kensler’s silencing memo an attempt to “control the narrative,” after a series of headline-grabbing attacks on staff and a savage patient-on-patient killing earlier this year.
“The craziness is turned all the way up,” the guard said. “I’m scared somebody else is going to die in there.”
Kensler didn’t respond to a phone call and a list of emailed questions requesting comment on the out-ofcontrol conditions inside the facility that he took over as CEO more than a year ago.
A spokeswoman from the state Department of Health pointed to the hiring of an additional 90 workers as one of the steps the facility has taken to address the escalating violence.
She downplayed the alleged silencing memo as a routine reminder.
“The Department of Health’s long-standing policy—that applies to all staff—is that press calls are handled by the Office of Communications,” Donna Leusner wrote in response to the newspaper’s inquiries. “A communication to Ann Klein staff recently reinforced that policy, which all employees sign upon hire.”
Despite allegations from multiple guards that the psychiatric facility is “fudging” statistics kept on the number of attacks at the facility, Leusner contended assaults have largely “remain unchanged” over the last two years.
Ann Klein experienced at least five substantiated patient-on-patient attacks during the first six months of this year, according to state data, compared with 14 in 2017.
Those stats are likely an undercount as the state only reports incidents after they’re substantiated, which could take months.
Rape, Murder, Mayhem
The Trentonian has written extensively about the problems at Ann Klein, based on multiple interviews and a review of internal and publicly available documents that paint a bleak portrait of a facility that was in jeopardy of losing accreditation unless it instituted a number of reforms that guards feel have contributed to a decline in the level of security at the state-run psychiatric hospital.
In recent years, Ann Klein Forensic Center has been slapped with lawsuits from a medical technician and a doctor who said they were attacked while working there.
Another female patient unsuccessfully tried to sue after she was raped by exsecurity guard Kenneth Glover last year.
Then in February of this year, mentally ill patient Dwayne Hester was charged with beating another patient to death.
Hester, who had a history of aggressive behavior, attacked a fellow patient, 55-year-old Daniel Rodriguez, for no apparent reasons, according to a probable cause affidavit. Rodriguez suffered a
fractured skull and brain hemorrhaging and died about a month later,
Guards also described a nearly daily onslaught of serious patient-on-staff attacks, including one in which a doctor was knocked unconscious.
The Trentonian has learned that the man who was allegedly behind the doctor beatdown, 29-yearold Jaquin Works, may have also been involved in the gang rape.
The female patient initially was giving another male patient a handjob in another part of the rehabilitation wing when a staffer walked in on them and interrupted the sex act, one of the guards said.
The guard was working in another part of the building at the time of the attack but learned about what happened from several guards who were present in the area of the facility where the gang rape happened.
Patients are not allowed to engage in sexual activity so the two patients should have been disciplined or sent back to their cells, the guard said.
But that didn’t happen for some reason, the guard said, and the male and female patient left to a nearby bathroom stall to continue the sex acts, the guard said.
As they were inside the stall in the restroom, several other men walked in and noticed the two, the guard said.
At that point, three or more men jumped in and proceeded to rape, sodomize and force the woman to perform oral sex while a lookout kept watch near the bathroom doors, the guard said.
The lookout, identified to The Trentonian as 36-yearold Matthew Freeman, was keeping tabs on a guard who temporarily left his post to help out other guards in another part of the building, the guard said. In addition, 28-year-old Marquese Battle and another man known only at this point as Jamal were identified as potentially being involved in the gang rape, the security guard said. The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office refused to confirm or deny whether the five patients reported to The Trentonian are suspects in the case. Authorities are also exploring whether the man who was initially involved in a consensual sexual encounter with the victim may have played a role in setting up or orchestrating the gang rape. The security guard claimed none of the individuals who were allegedly involved in the gang rape were punished. In fact, one of the alleged participants, Arroyo, has still been allowed to roam around the facility freely even though he was charged in January in a separate sexual assault of another inmate.